Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

our faces, he put one arm around me and the other around Melanie and drew us to him, comforting us with the reassurance of his strong arms.
    Everyone had been out on the beach last night. If Kelly had been there, I didn't see her.
    "When was the last time you saw Devin Ballantine?" Officer Meriweather asked me, drawing me back to the pleasure of a gentle summer morning at Wrightsville. The children on the beach found a tide pool left by the surf and were splashing around in it.
    Meriweather was questioning me as well as everyone in the house. He was about mid-fifties, solid, reliable. Fatherly. I'd been with Melanie a time or two when he'd issued her speeding tickets, that's how I knew him, and he had always seemed genuinely concerned about her safety and that her speeding would result in a serious accident. Not that it did any good. But I liked him, respected him.
    "The last time I saw Devin Ballantine, Officer Meriweather , he was chasing down the beach with someone. That was late Wednesday night. I'm pretty sure it was Devin."
    Meriweather gave me a searching but patient look that said: Take all the time you need but tell me about this. So I told him all about how two people had entered my bedroom while I'd been sleeping on the sofa in the sitting room.
    "And you think the second person was Devin Ballantine? Why? Did you get a look at him?" Meriweather wiped a fine sheen of perspiration off his forehead with the back of his hand. The sun was climbing, relentless, it would be broiling hot soon.
    "No," I replied, "but I smelled that musk oil he always wore. It's cloying and strong and I can't stand the smell of it, so that's how I identified him."
    Meriweather jotted a few notes in his note pad then asked, "Why would Ballantine come into your room at night? That part, I don't get. Was there something personal going on between you two?"
    "What! No way!" I exclaimed, and realized the trap I'd set for myself. "Of course not. I don't know why he came into my room. I'm not even positive it was him, I just think it was. I think he followed someone else into my room, and the whole thing just puzzles me. What did they want? And why my room?"
    "Did you bring anything valuable with you? Jewelry, for instance?"
    "The only jewelry I've got with me is what I've got on: my wedding ring, my watch, diamond stud earrings. It's too hot for jewelry. All my other stuff is locked up at my house back in town, and I keep the alarm set."
    "Okay, let's go back to the two figures you saw running down the beach. How do you know they were the same two people who entered your room? Why not a couple of boys horsing around on the beach?"
    "I don't know. I just assumed the two figures were the same two people -- men, I feel sure they were men -- who had scuffled in my bedroom. I heard them go out on the deck below," and I motioned downward, "and they took the stairs down to the beach. It seemed reasonable that it was them. Besides, the two I saw on the beach were not horsing around. There was nothing playful about the way they were running. One was running to escape. The second, whom I assumed was Devin, was running to catch the first. Melanie heard noises that night too. Ask her what she heard. And Mickey was here too; he might have heard something."
    "I'll talk to Ms. Wilkes again before I go. Mickey Ballantine isn't talking to us, by the way. But your sister told us that he hadn't seen Devin all day yesterday but wasn't concerned. 'He's a big boy,' she quoted him as saying. 'He can take care of himself.'
    "Devin didn't have a car here," Meriweather went on, "not one that your sister knew about. Mickey had been driving him around, she said. But Devin could have asked for a ride from someone else, she supposed."
    "That's correct. Devin didn't have a car here. I don't know how he got around. I've been working most days and didn't think about it. And Melanie has been working too so she wasn't here to keep tabs on him. But Kelly saw him go off in a Humvee with a friend of his from Lejeune."
    "Hmmm. I'll look into that. I understand Devin told Melanie he was shopping for a boat, so she figured a salesman had picked him up to take him to one of the marinas yesterday. Now we know different. The doc confirms that Ballantine had been dead for approximately twenty hours when you found him."
    I lifted my coffee mug, then set it down, remembering. "Devin told all of us he was shopping for a boat, but I don't think he ever looked at one. He never talked